A video has gone viral in the United States about a brazen attempt by a white woman to frame an innocent black man, bird watching in Central Park, New York.
In the video, the woman, identified as Amy Cooper, called the police to report the African American, as she held her dog.
Her call showed some desperations as if she was under attack.
“I’m taking a picture and calling the cops,” Amy Cooper is heard saying in the video.
“I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life.”
But it was a mere false alarm, typical racism in the United States.
The African-American, Christian Cooper video-taped the incident that has now gone viral.
When the police came, they found neither Amy Cooper nor Christian Cooper at the Park.
Reports said Amy Cooper’s company found out about the incident and promptly fired her.
“We do not tolerate racism of any kind at Franklin Templeton,” the company said on Twitter.
According to a CNN report of the incident, Amy Cooper was walking her dog Monday morning while Christian Cooper was bird-watching at a wooded area of Central Park called the Ramble.
They both told CNN their dispute began because her dog was not on a leash, contrary to the Ramble’s rules, according to the park’s website.
In comments to CNN as the video spread widely, Amy Cooper said she wanted to “publicly apologize to everyone.”
“I’m not a racist. I did not mean to harm that man in any way,” she said, adding that she also didn’t mean any harm to the African American community.
As CNN reported, the incident is another example of white people calling the police on African Americans for mundane things.
“I videotaped it because I thought it was important to document things,” Christian Cooper said.
“Unfortunately we live in an era with things like Ahmaud Arbery, where black men are seen as targets. This woman thought she could exploit that to her advantage, and I wasn’t having it.”
Christian Cooper is a Harvard graduate, a former Marvel Comics editor and now the senior biomedical editor at Health Science Communications, according to a post on Twitter.
